Mamre (; ), full name "Oaks of Mamre", refers to an ancient religious site originally focused on a single holy tree growing "since time immemorial" at Hebron in Canaan. It is best known from the biblical story of Abraham and the three visitors. He pitched his tents is known as the oak or terebinth of Mamre. Modern scholars have identified four sites near Hebron which, in different historical periods, could have been successively known as Mamre: Khirbet Nimra, also known as Ayn Nimreh, (a little excavated Persian and Hellenistic period site, a hypothetical identification, not proven by any archaeological finds), Ramat el-Khalil, also known as Haram er-Rama (the best known site, flourished from the Herodian through the Byzantine period), Deir Al Arba'een complex, and Khirbet es-Sibte. The last one contained an old oak tree identified by a relatively new tradition as the Oak of Mamre, which collapsed in 2019, and is on the grounds of the Church of the Holy Forefathers and Monastery of the Holy Trinity. There is a rather recent hypothesis (neither archaeologically nor in any other way confirmed) that at the location of Khirbet Nimra, a tree cult predated the biblical narrative.
Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, as well as Christian and Jewish sources from the Byzantine period, locate Mamre at the site later renamed in Arabic as Ramat el-Khalil, 4 km north of historical Hebron and approximately halfway between that city and Halhul. Herod the Great initiated the Jewish identification of the site with Mamre, by erecting there a monumental enclosure. It was one of the three most important fairs or marketplaces in Judea, where the fair was held next to the venerated tree accompanied by an interdenominational festival celebrated by Jews, pagans, and Christians alike. This prompted Emperor Constantine the Great to unsuccessfully stop this practice by erecting a Christian basilica there.
Hebrew Bible
Names and events
Mamre is the site where Abraham pitched tents for his camp and built an altar, following his separation from Lot, his nephew, and where he was brought divine tidings in the guise of three angels who promised that Sarah, his wife, would become pregnant in Genesis 18:1-15.
reports that Abraham settled "near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron". The original Hebrew tradition appears, to judge from a textual variation conserved in the Septuagint, to have referred to a single great oak tree, which Josephus called Ogyges. Mamre has frequently been associated with the Cave of the Patriarchs. According to one scholar, there is considerable confusion in the Biblical narrative concerning not only Mamre, but also Machpelah, Hebron and Kiryat Arba, all four of which are aligned repeatedly. In Genesis, Mamre is also identified with Hebron itself (). The Christian tradition of identifying a ruined site surrounded by walls and called in Arabic Rāmet el-Ḥalīl ('Hill of the Friend', meaning: "the friend of God", i.e. Abraham), with the Old Testament Mamre, goes back to the earliest Christian pilgrims in the 4th century CE, and connects to a tradition from the time of Herod (1st century BCE). an ally or friend of Abraham, Mamre being the name of one of the three Amorite chiefs who joined forces with those of Abraham in pursuit of Chedorlaomer to save Lot in Genesis 14:13, 24.
The supposed discrepancy is often explained as reflecting the discordance between the different scribal traditions behind the composition of the Torah, the former relating to the Yahwist, the latter to the Elohist recension, according to the classic formulation of the documentary hypothesis.
Identification
There appear to be four main sites which have been known, at different times in history, as Mamre. These are, chronologically:
- Khirbet Nimra or Ayn Nimreh, an archaeological site next to Hebron and 1.5 km south of Ramat el-Khalil, hypothetically identified by several researchers as the Mamre of Achaemenid Judea and the subsequent Hellenistic period, but not confirmed by any archaeological finds. A modern Russian Orthodox monastery is marking the site.
History and archaeology
thumb|Mamre on Madaba Map
Khirbet Nimra
According to Abel and Jericke among others, Persian and Hellenistic Mamre was located at Khirbet Nimra, 2 km north of the Cave of Machpelah, inside modern Hebron, where a pagan tree cult, supposedly, predates the biblical Abraham narrative.
However, excavations at the archaeological site of Khirbet Nimra on the summit of Jebel Nimra did not prove Abel's supposition that this should be an ancient shrine: the archaeological team found only a Persian administrative building from the 6th–5th centuries BCE, that was later converted into an agricultural center, mainly for the manufacture of olive oil and textiles. The building was apparently destroyed during Alexander the Great's campaign, and was temporarily inhabited by rebels or refugees who had fled Jerusalem during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Abel's (and later Jericke's) hypothesis rests primarily on the linguistically probable assumption that "Nimra" is a corruption of "Mamre". Nonetheless, it seems that "Mamre" was not only an ancient name for Hebron (Gen. 23:19), but referred to the whole wider locality, including the Jebel Nimra mountain, as the Cave of Machpelah is on its western slope, while to its west Nahạl Hebron bisects the city of Hebron.
Besides, Jericke's equation of Khirbet Nimra with a highly hypothetical original tree shrine from the Persian and Hellenistic periods led him to date the story of Abraham at Mamre to the Persian period, which was rejected by the majority of other researchers.
OpenBible.info, run by Crossway Bibles (a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers) rates the claim that Khirbet Nimra is Mamre as "very low confidence".
Ramat el-Khalil
Research and analysis
The archaeological site of Ramat el-Khalil (Grid Ref. 160300/107200) was first excavated by in 1926–1928, followed by Sayf al-Din Haddad (1977), 'Abd el-Aziz Arjub (1984–1985),
Greenberg and Keinan list the main periods of settlement as Early Roman, Late Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader, with less substantial findings from the Iron Age IIc era (700—586 BCE) and the Hellenistic period. but there is no archaeological evidence for the site being occupied from the first half of the second millennium down to the end of the Iron Age
The 2 m thick stone wall enclosing an area 49 m wide and 65 m long was constructed by Herod, possibly as a cultic place of worship. It contained an ancient well, more than 5 m in diameter,
Josephus: the terebinth
Josephus (37 – c. 100) records a tradition according to which the terebinth at Mamre was as old as the world itself (War 4.534). The site was soaked in legend. Jews, Christians and Pagans made sacrifices on the site, burning animals, and the tree was considered immune to the flames of the sacrifices. Constantine the Great (r. 302–337) was still attempting, without success, to stop this tradition.
A vignette of the Constantinian basilica with its colonnaded atrium appears on the 6th-century Madaba Map, under the partially preserved Greek caption "Arbo, also the Terebinth. The Oak of Mambre".
The Constantinian basilica was destroyed during the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem of 614.
Since, in Islam, the Kaaba in Mecca is sacred as the "house of Ibrahim/Abraham" (see Qur'an 2:125), his tradition of hospitality has also moved to that city, and under Muslim rule Mamre has lost its historical significance as an inter-religious place of worship and festivity.